Writing and raising children in the leafy London suburbs

Mysterious monoliths materialised outside each of the girls’ rooms a couple of weeks ago and are communicating old-fashioned messages written on – get this! – paper.

Forget all of the smartphones, computers, tablets, smart TVs, digiboxes and everything else that can send digital messages at the speed of light; my two children are over-the-moon each morning to receive letters.

They’ve always enjoyed receiving stuff through the post (who doesn’t? Although, these days, we’re more likely to enjoy receiving things from eBay than, say, Great Uncle Monty in Fitzrovia!). What’s different now is that they enjoy the simple pleasure of reading hand-written letters from myself or the Lovely Melanie each morning.

The letters seldom say much of great import: “Well done on getting two house points at school yesterday”, “Don’t forget your PE kit again!” or simply “We love you,” but Millie makes us promise to write a letter each evening, and both of them are downcast if the postboxes are empty come the morning.

It’s very sweet.

And afterwards they’ll switch the computer on and play Lego Marvel Superheroes together for half an hour, which is also rather sweet, but in a slightly different way.

One thought on “Call them old-fashioned…”

I found this endearing post via your tumblr and, as a fellow writer, I grew up in an age before emails. We all wrote letters and notes. We actually had PENPALS. Text boxes do not recognize the term; its archaic in our modern times! This made me all sort of happy. ^_^

We all inhabit a house on the edge of London, and I make a living as a copywriter in the centre of town.

It's been a turbulent few years - tragedy struck early in 2011 when my younger brother died very suddenly and unexpectedly. We're still recovering from that.
My dad had a heart transplant in 2008. He's still alive and doing very well indeed.